‘Oh, and planes,’ chimes in
Joanne Catherall, ignoring him. ‘We love drinking on planes, don’t we? They
usually bring us a full-size bottle. They don’t bother with those little
ones.’

They continue to bicker as we’re
driven to the ITN building where they’re due to appear on
London Tonight.

If talking to the League (now
essentially Phil, Joanne and Susan, plus hired musicians) sometimes seems
like getting caught up in an irascible
ménage à trois – the girls all giggles, with Phil as sardonic Greek
chorus – then that’s pretty much how it’s been for the past three decades,
since the original band split in half (with synth players Martyn Ware and
Ian Craig Marsh going off to form Heaven 17).

Vocalist and songwriter Phil
recruited schoolgirls Joanne and Susan as backing singers straight off the
dance floor at Sheffield’s Crazy Daisy disco. David Bowie once described
them as the sound of the future, but today, anyone hearing the electro-pop
beat of ‘Don’t You Want Me’ will be teleported back to the early 80s.

Many things have changed since
then, not least the League’s personal circumstances (Joanne and Phil were
once an item; she’s now married with a son) and their appearance (Joanne and
Susan have swapped their asymmetrical cuts for bobs, while Phil’s swooping
fringe has succumbed to a grey crew-cut).

Other things have remained the
same, like their dedication to Sheffield (they insist on staying based there)
and their contrariness; Phil says he ‘despises’ the 80s package tours that
currently serve as pension funds for many of their erstwhile peers.

The League’s latest attempt to
present their heritage in a more palatable way

comes with this winter’s Steel
City Tour, in which they’ll share the bill with fellow Sheffield alumni
Heaven 17 and ABC.

Does this mean they’ve buried
the hatchet with the former at last? ‘There wasn’t really one to bury,’ says
Joanne. ‘Well, only in the beginning, because we signed an agreement with
Martyn and Ian that said we’d give them so much money from the next album,
because it was them who’d originally formed the band. We didn’t think it
would do anything, but it was Dare,
which went on to sell six million copies. So that really annoyed us.’

‘But not making as much money as
we should have done is a kind of recurring theme,’ admits Susan. ‘It’s quite
vexing, as this is our life. We’re not part-timers. I got very offended a
few years ago when someone asked me what I did when I wasn’t in the group. I
mean, I don’t come offstage and go off to work in Dixons or something.’

Like any outfit who’s stuck
around, the League has seen its influence wax and wane, but by the beginning
of the 90s, the group was at a nadir.

‘It was awful,’ remembers Susan.
‘Our sort of music was the most unfashionable thing in the world. It was all
guitars and grunge and talking about death and shooting up heroin, and we’re
so far removed from all that. I had a breakdown and Philip ended up on
Prozac. But that did turn around.’

‘I stayed in for about seven
years during the 90s,’ says Phil. ‘But now there’s an exciting scene in
Sheffield again. I’m even venturing out to clubs and our sound is back in
vogue.’

Given that, will the League be
around in another 20 years? ‘Jesus Christ,’ gasps Susan, ‘I’ll be 65.’

‘We didn’t think we’d be around
this long,’ interjects Joanne.

‘But one of the greatest things,’
says Susan, ‘is that we can go on stage in front of 20,000 people, then
wander round the city centre and no one knows who we are. I was in Aldi and
the girl on the check-out said, “Has anyone told you that you look like that
girl from the Human League?” And then she went, “I bet you wish you had all
her money, don’t you?”’